Launching back 50 years ago by Steve Gore and Steve Kretzmer when they first met in High School together in Oak Park, Michigan, they had a huge admiration of Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Henry Cow, Frank Zappa, and the genres of the Rock-In-Opposition movement and the Canterbury scene. Rascal Reporters had recorded hundreds of songs going back from the ‘70s to the ‘80s, using instruments, tape recorders, and synthesisers.
It’s hard to describe where to put the Rascal Reporters’ music. But with a delve between insane time changes, humorous lyrical textures, complex arrangements, and quirky melodies, its quite the opposite. Not to mention the cult-following they have among their love of the progressive rock genre with the acknowledgement and the torch that they carry to keep the legacy live on.
That and their eighth studio album released last year entitled The Strainge Case of Steve which was recorded between 2017 and 2023 at the duo’s home studios in Michigan and Carlow, Ireland, it features collaborations between The Muffins’ Dave Newhouse, Univers Zero’s Guy Segers, Homunculus Res’ Dario D’Allessandro, and Jessica Martin Maresco of Pili Coit and Le Grand Sbam.
Listening to The Strainge Case of Steve, it is a weird, odd, strange, but off-the-wall fun with its avant-rock approach and nod to its Canterbury milkshake that is waiting for you after finishing a big meal that you had for lunch. ‘Fat Delivered’ opens the album with its fuzztone orientation of an organ fanfare, waiting for its listener to join in the celebration.
Combining the essence of Frank Zappa’s ‘Dog Breath, The Year of Plague’, Caravan’s In The Land of Grey and Pink-era, and the Wyatt-sque approach to keep you on the edge of your seat. ‘Beetle Borscht’ takes a back seat into a gentle piano arrangement for a few seconds before walking into the comic strips of the Peanuts gang who are enjoying the music the duo is creating, but adding in their own bit of fun to the groove.
The stop-and-go changes behind ‘Over and Out’ sounded like one of the unearthed materials that was left off of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse that Mark Mothersbaugh originally used as it goes into a crazy cat-and-mouse chase which speaks of those 1950 shorts of Tom and Jerry that comes to mind. When I think of ‘How Archonic the Ankle Biters’ which sounds like a Python sketch, I think of The Faust Tapes that comes to mind.
Here, the percussions and chaotic effects that are used on the seventh track take it up a notch by adding all of the craziness that’s about to happen before it starts to engage in the outer limits with its synthesized dance beats. Rascal Reporters are having a ball behind this track.
They use an insane motif by sending Morse Codes before delving back into the void that’ll keep you guessing to see what happens next as Maresco steps into the mic as she sings this mind-boggling medley on ‘Uh Oh (Lait Suspendu Fermenté)’. She sings in French as she watches the duo conducting her to come in and come out at the right moment.
There are elements of Half Past Four, Thinking Plague, Egg, Dagmar Krause of Slapp Happy, and Jono El Grande rolled into one. ‘Lurking in Shadow Fury’ reminded me of William D. Drake’s The Rising of the Lights, big time. Coming down of the thunder, which is right in the middle of Drake’s ‘The Mastodon’ with its intensive percussion work, hand-clapping momentum, and a volcanic eruption of the organ rising from the lava, you might have to dig through your record collection and see if the labels of Seventh Records and Rune Grammofon will fit right in there.
The Strainge Case of Steve may take a couple of repeatable listens to get into, but this here is where Rascal Reporters have really taken the opportunity to push the envelope by staying true to who they really are. It is a crazy release, yes, but they have the guts to prove that the Prog genre is more than just a four-letter word. And we got to step into the bus to see what kind of incredible magic is inside.
